Sunday, January 13, 2013

The
poets we read were from the world over: India – 1, Britain – 3, USA – 2, and Greece
– 1. Two were read in translation from Malayalam and ancient Greek respectively. Only one
poet was a woman. The readers were split, 4 women and 3 men.

Talitha reading 'The Great Lover' by Rupert Brooke

The
missing four readers lost out on the great enthusiasm with which the New Year’s
session started. The Malayalam poet’s idiom was modern and Sappho speaking
through the voice of her translator came through as a lyricist (and lyrist) of
love and longing.

Priya in soft focus

T.S. Eliot, a favourite of Sivaram since college
days, was recited for the third time in our group whose collective memory is
preserved at Poets& Poems, here to the right.

KumKum reads fragments of Sappho as Priya and Talitha watch

Our general mood, always enlivened by the give and
take of exchanges, ended on a note of great merriment when Mathew read from
Ogden Nash.

Priya reading Balachandran Chullikad's poem 'Winter in Stockholm'

Here are the readers at the end of the session (Joe
is clicking and Zakia was away).

The next session will be 12+1 short stories of
Chekhov on Feb
7 (date posted on blog). Please keep the day free; this will be the
lightest reading load ever. Links have been given for procuring the volume in
hard copy, for those who prefer that mode to e-text. Mar 8and Apr
12are the next dates for Poetry
and Fiction, respectively.

The remaining five fiction pieces for the year should
be chosen and announced by month-end Jan, please. Readers, please note.

The session ended with suggestions from members
(Priya, Talitha) to hold a ‘Poetry Slam’ or a Reading at say, David Hall (DH).
Joe responded that he had tried the first course when Padmini Krishnan was
manager of DH but she did not have the administrative time or the publicity
machinery to gather a reasonable crowd (say, 30 to 40 people) for such an event
and the funds to host it. Mridula, daughter of Jose Dominic, is keen that DH be
used for such events, but do any of us have the time to organise it and the
energy to put into the needed leg work?

Priya

Balachandran Chullikad

Priya was to read from a Malayalam
language poet, Balachandran Chullikad (born 1957), referred to as Balendran in
the usual elision that takes place, or a Balettan as he is known to younger
folk. Early in life Balendran took to the Buddhist practice of spending time as
a monk, begging for food; he had some bad experiences. His own parents
ridiculed him. He did his Eng Litt degree from Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam.
Sivaram said Balendran has not written for the last five or eight years, but he
has acted in TV serials. However Balendran was offered the Mooloor Smaraka
Samithi award (declined) for a collection called ‘Prathinayakan' in 2011:

She said he came across as an interesting man.
Performance poetry in Malayalam started with him. It’s good to read Priya’s
interview to get a life history of the man and his journey in poetry. He
declares himself to be an angry young man, though he is now nearing retirement
age in India.

When KumKum talked of Satchidanandan as being a
modern Malayalam poet, whom she has heard at the Hay festival in TVM in 2011
and 2010, Priya responded saying Balendran’s imagery and language is more
modern.

Cohabiting with a woman for a long time before he
married her, brought him some notoriety, which he relishes. He started out his
literary career reciting in reading rooms and libraries all over Kerala. CDs of
his performances are available. His voice was praised by Priya and Sivaram. You
can look him up on Youtube.

When Sivaram said he could bring a CD of Balendran,
Priya said, ‘No, bring him, if you know him,’ for he reads his poems, or rather
drones them in song, very well.

The first poem Priya chose stems from a visit
Balendran made to Stockholm on some Nobel business, said Priya. It is
translated into English by Kamala Das.

KumKum

Sappho of Eressos bust - the bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost

Sappho was a
woman poet from ancient Greece, who lived circa 600 BC. She was known to be a
lyrist, as well as a lyricist. She enjoyed fame and adulation during her life
and beyond. Even today, almost every generation comes up with newer translations
of her poems.

Little is
known of her life, and even her poems have come to us only in fragments. She is
an enigma, remote and shrouded in mystery.

We learn about
Sappho in the surviving literature of the poets who came after her, and through
shards of history in the form of statues and plaques; alas her own poems
survive only in fragments.

Sappho lived
in the island of Lesbos, from which we have the word 'lesbian.' Sappho traveled
widely within Greece. Once she was exiled to Sicily because of her family's
involvement in politics. Her statues are found in different places in Greece as
she was quite famous in her time.

Sappho was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets

Sappho sang
her poems to the accompaniment of the music she played on her lyre. Music was
the soul of her poems, so she adjusted the words accordingly. She invented the
Sapphic meter, an acknowledged Greek poetic style. Sappho wrote about sensual
love, love for men and women. Other emotions too are included in her poems. Sappho did not write about gods, goddesses and
imaginary feelings, as
was the custom in her time. Instead, she wrote and sang about her own feelings. Human feelings and emotions are universal, and they easily transcend time. That is
why, even today, readers can warm to Sappho.

KumKum
chose to read the poems from an award-winning translation by
Josephine Balmer, titled Poems and Fragments by Sappho.

While
KumKum was reading her introductory spiel, Joe asked if all women in Lesbos
were lesbians. KumKum replied jocularly, ‘Wait a minute Joe, just because you
are my husband don’t think you can interrupt me.’ The question was later
answered in the negative. The upper class sent their daughters to Sappho for
them to acquire the finer graces of life – music, poetry, writing, etc. Sappho
wrote one of her poems, fragment
#32 below, to such a girl who was returning to her family: “she was weeping as she took her leave from me.”

Another
question Joe put was whether people had tried to fill in the fragments and
complete her poems. Here is Sappho's poem on old age in a papyrus fragment:

Sappho's poem on old age - Papyrus fragment

This
question he was allowed to ask and the answer was, yes; but no example of an
attempt at completing one of her fragments was given. Sappho wrote in the
Aeolic dialect which fell into disuse, and as time went by, fewer and fewer
copies were made, and their survival intact was jeopardised.Her fame undoubtedly grew, for in an epigram
ascribed to Plato, he writes:

Some
say the Muses are nine: how careless!

Look,
there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.

Sappho,
like Shakespeare and Keats, entertained intimations of immortality on her own,
for she writes,

Although
they are

only
breath, words

which
I command

are
immortal

And
somewhere else, “ ... dead,/ I won’t be forgotten.’

KumKum
declared her predilection for women in these terms, ‘I think women are more
beautiful than men.’ To which Mathew’s sparkling retort was, ‘So do men!’ This
elicited a burble of laughter among the readers.

Sivaram
volunteered that there was a predominance of lesbians in the island of Lesbos.
However, Sappho was married and had children, and her daughter, Cleis, named
after her own mother, is addressed in fragment #75 below. Priya commented that
the fragments evince a very feminine sensibility. On this point there is a
commentary titled ‘Sappho's Feminine Voice’ at this website:

Sappho’s
first collection was in Sapphic metre in which each stanza consists of three
11-syllable lines followed by a 5-syllable line in a particular rhythm. See the
wiki on Sapphic stanza.

Talitha

Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke (born 1887) didn’t see the war. He
was going to the front in World War I when he died ingloriously of a mosquito
bite that led to septicaemia. He was buried in 1915 in the island of Skyros in
the Aegean Sea. Brooke was ardently patriotic. His most famous poem, The Soldier, has these immortal lines:

IF I should die, think only this of me:

That
there's some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England. There shall be

In that
rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Rupert Brooke statue

Many poets wrote about him after his death, and a
poem by Colin Jeffery is affixed below The
Great Lover. This poem is a confession of the little things Brooke loved and
enjoyed in the ordinary setting of life; not therefore about great love for a
person. Its beauty lies in its choice of simple but unlikely words to describe the objects he is partial to, e.g., ‘the rough male kiss of
blankets.,’ ‘the cool kindliness of sheets,’ ‘the blue bitter smoke of wood.’
As people have noted, he not only involves all the five senses in the imagery,
but employs such devices of poetry as alliteration. It is difficult to
write poetry in English without repeating images that are time-worn, but his
achievement lies in setting down some first-rate lines that will haunt future poets, and are a measure of his talent.

Talitha mentioned that his looks made him a young
Apollo, and he could not enter a room without making people flip. He flipped
quite a few girls in his time, added Joe. Mathew grabbed a picture of the handsome
lad from the Internet on his iPhone and showed it to the group. I think it was
this:

Rupert Brooke in 1913

Brooke was part of the Bloomsbury set of Virginia
Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E.M Forster, J.M. Keynes, et al. Joe thought that informal grouping came
about later, but in any event Rupert Brooke died too young to leave a legacy in
that set.

Talitha pointed out the contrast between the high
ode style of the first part (‘The inenarrable godhead of delight’), and the homely
descriptions of the second part which begins with ‘These I have loved.’

The line ‘White plates and cups, clean-gleaming’
impelled KumKum to weigh in and tell of her delight in drinking from white cups
(she does not stoop to drink from cups whose insides are any other colour). Joe
inquired if there are variant versions of this poem, because he seemed to
remember ‘The benison of hot water’ differently. No, Talitha was not aware of variants. She noted that a mere list can make a poem,
and you could be inspired to think of other lists – but can an average
poetaster come up with a single memorable line? Brooke has so many.

KumKum wanted Talitha to read from Robert Southey at
another reading. The correct pronunciation is "Sowthey". The poet
himself complained that people in the North would call him "Mr
Suthy". Byron knew better when he
rhymed Southey with "mouthy" (Don Juan, Canto 1, Stanza 205). For the
reference see:

Sivaram wanted to read from T.S. Eliot whom he
has idolised from his college days; at first he chose the poem Prufrock but since that was recently
recited by Priya, he chose the first section, Burnt Norton, of the Four
Quartets. The name is that of an abbey, and when one thinks of an abbey in English
poetry, one naturally thinks of Tintern
Abbey, Wordsworth’s poem. Eliot’s poem concerns death, death in life, and
time, and has a mysterious aura that is difficult to place. The commentary of
critics becomes denser than usual when it deals with Eliot, for instance, Marion
Montgomery writes “In Burnt Norton images are touched by a reality larger than
an empirical psychology or a logically-adumbrated phenomenology can explain.”

Sivaram said every line can be a quotation; of which
the meaning may be wrested by the reader in several ways. That is the charm.
There is an epigrammatic quality about the termination:

Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Contrast the intended profundity of this with
Einstein’s simpler statement

The only reason for time is so that everything
doesn't happen at once.

KumKum wanted Joe to send everyone a link to the article
in The Guardian which provides a
digested read of the latest volume of T.S. Eliot’s letters, so carefully
preserved and edited by his wife, and erstwhile secretary, Valerie Eliot. An example
was given by Joe; Eliot rejects a poem by e e cummings in a single line, and
inquires:

Have you thought about taking remedial lessons in
grammar and punctuation?

T.S. Eliot by Matt Blease

You can read this and other unintended hilarity (for
instance, the matter of the 12 paper-clips) in the original article at

Thommo said he didn’t know Emerson as a poet before,
but mainly as an essayist. He took up the poem, Concord Hymn, sung at the opening of the Concord Monument in 1836.
The famous line, ‘the shot heard around the world’ comes from the battle at the
Concord Bridge in the War of the American Revolution in 1775. See:

but the more notable monument on Lexington Common is
that of a Minuteman; Minutemen were a company of militia in Massachusetts:

Minuteman statue on Lexington Common - The first stanza of 'Concord Hymn' is inscribed at the base of the statue made by Daniel Chester French.

Sivaram said Emerson was a philosopher and mentor to
Thoreau; his quotations are really ‘fantastic.’

The identification of subject and object in the
second poem by Emerson, Brahma, (‘slayer’
and ‘slain,’ ‘doubter’ and ‘doubt,’ ‘shadow’ and ‘sunlight’) was cause for
Talitha to object strenuously that she
did not agree with two opposites being the same; it’s absurd. Joe responded by
asking how could she disagree straightaway, for one has to understand what is
being said first before agreeing or disagreeing; Joe thinks that poems like this
take time to assimilate. Is Emerson saying that Brahma, the Creator, unifies in
himself, or herself, all that exists in the universe, for (s)he is the
originator of it all? In which case, since many opposite things exist in nature
(shadow and sunlight) and all are subsumed in Brahma, they seem the same to
himer. This may sound paradoxical to us, who aren’t Brahma.

Sivaram said the stanzas of this poem are similar in
tenor to what Krishna says to Arjuna in the Bhagvad
Gita.

Who is the ‘red slayer’ of the poem, was a question
asked by several. Thommo said it could mean the Sun. If you look at notes on
the Web, the explanation is that men of the Kshatriya caste, warriors, are what
are described by the term ‘red slayer.’

Joe

Joseph Brodsky - Russian-born writer poet essayist

Joseph
Brodsky, born 1940 as Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky in Leningrad received the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 when he had already made the transition to
America. He started writing poetry in 1955 while holding all sorts of odd jobs.
He attracted the interest of Akhmatova who encouraged him. Not one to pick a
quarrel with an autocratic regime, he nevertheless earned its ire, not for
criticising the regime, but because he was regarded in the Soviet system as a
shirker, a parasite who did not contribute to the rigid society within its
defined norms. He was denounced by another poet Bobyshev, who was jealous and
competed for the love of Basmanova, a painter who was introduced to Brodsky by
Akhmatova. Brodsky had a child, Andrey, by Basmanova but marriage was
obstructed by the Soviet authorities.

Poem 1

There is a famous interrogation Brodsky underwent
before a judge for ‘social parasitism’ in 1963:

Judge: And what is your profession, in general?Brodsky: I am a poet and a literary translator.Judge: Who recognizes you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of
poets?Brodsky: No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?Judge: Did you study this?Brodsky: What this?Judge: How to become a poet. You did not even try to finish high school
where they prepare, where they teach?Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.Judge: How then?Brodsky: I think that it ... comes from God, yes God.

For this impertinence Brodsky earned five years of
internal exile to a labour camp in Archangelsk near the Arctic circle.

Poem 2

The exile was commuted after a 1965 protest by
Soviet and foreign artists and writers. He was expelled from the Soviet Union
in 1972 and ended up in the United States, holding various academic positions
and becoming an American citizen in 1977.

Poem 3

His work is known to English-speaking people
through translations from the Russian, initially by others, later by himself collaborating with translators.
He turned his hand to essays and wrote poetry in the English language as well.
In 1991 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States.

Basmanova and their son, Andrey, and his
grandchildren when Andrey married, were supported by Brodsky. Brodsky married
another woman in 1990 and had a daughter, Anna, by that marriage. He died in
New York of a heart attack in 1996 and is buried in Venice.Poem 4

Priya liked the first poem.

Mathew

Ogden Nash in 1938

The delectable poet and incorrigible versifier,
Ogden Nash (ON), was Mathew’s selection. We are all indebted to him, because the
light poems gave us so many laughs that we would live willingly in ON’s company
forever. Mathew is a lover of Wodehouse and the poem, PG Wooster, Just as he Useter,
reflects the beloved author of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. In Wodehouse’s work,
Mathew observed, the author does not matter, he is invisible, for one
identifies so completely with the inimitable characters he created:

Bertram
Wodehouse and PG Wooster,

They
are linked in my mind like Simon and Schuster.

Talitha
made a witticism about the play Amadeus
where Mozart as a boy gambols with a young girl, spanking her or something
like that, at which Mozart concludes that ‘a spankable body is what I have to
look for in a future wife.’ That was Constanze. I wish Talitha would slow down
when she interjects these bubbly comments, so that they are reported accurately and not forgotten.

Talitha later clarified that the Amadeus reference was to a "smackable botty", and it was one one of her students who jokingly remarked he would use it as a fundamental criterion to identify a suitable wife!

Ogden Nash headstone

The
opposites in a marriage are the subject of the hilarity in I Do, I Will, I Have. ON explains why marriage is more interesting
than divorce:

Because
it's the only known example of the happy meeting of

the
immovable object and the irresistible force.

The
final lines of ON’s poem were a fitting end to a hugely enjoyable session:

a
little incompatibility is the spice of life,

particularly
if he has income and she is pattable

How
much we laughed!

Ogden Nash stamp

Zakia

George Gordon Lord Byron

What was our surprise to have a second demi-god
introduced in this session of poetry, George Gordon Lord Byron! Spoiling the
ladies’ excitement to listen, someone let on that the poet had a club-foot; no
matter. He would still have worn his Greek regalia with the same swagger:

The poem selected by Zakia was She Walks in Beauty. The three stanzas of six lines each, were written
out in the lovely cursive hand of Zakia. They rhyme effortlessly in iambic tetrameter,
ababab. But note the inversion of the first
stress in the third line:

Meet in her aspect
and her eyes;

Perhaps the most memorable lines apart from the
opening are these two:

One
shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Sivaram
said, “It’s good to read a poem like this – so pure, so passionate, so innocent.”

Exercise for the Diligent
Reader

1. Add
four lines to Brooke’s list after:

And
oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;

maintaining
the meter and rhyme. See if you can avoid images poets have used in the past. Emulate Brooke's originality.

2. In the
manner of Ogden Nash write a light frolic on the subject of 'diamonds.' Minimum
four lines, maximum anything you please.

3. Write
four lines of poetry having the opacity of T.S. Eliot on some subject, which if apparent at
all, should be nugatory. Add a learned end-note, alluding to something
in Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit.

Readers' Responses to the Exercises

Priya

Exercise 1- My loves Rupert Brooke

Cold beer on Joe’s verandah,
fish in mustard, yellow, searing,

Poetry read aloud, and groups
in laughter burbling,

The wonder of cloud
computing, the magic of a baby’s world

If served with tea in a
china cup, I’m altogether sold!

Exercise 3- Diamonds
(tasteless but funny) Ogden Nash

I had diamonds for lunch,

And diamonds for dinner;

I was hoping at night

I‘d dream of diamonds too,

For my dreams may come true –

But, next morning I knew:

I’d fear to go to the loo!

KumKum

#1
Rupert Brooke

And
that enigmatic da Vinci smile, finding myself head of a Q

Oh
my precious Key, after I'd lost it for a day or two.

A
cup of Darj to start my day, at the end, too.

I
do love rain, Change, a tie-dye chiffon, in blue.

Of
course my garden, with its scents and colorful hue!

#2 Ogden Nash

Diamonds
always come with a hefty tag.

Man
gifts it to a woman, just to brag.

In
its glitter diamond manages to hide

The
ugly tale of its excavation and human plight.

Diamonds
are touted as symbol of love, "Forever"

But
it is hard, can break hearts, in splinters!

#3
T.S. Eliot

At
Seventy, I have the time to assess

‘Time
present and time past.’

Those
bygone years, I wish

I
could re-live them, differently;

Foresight
would make them richer, most definitely.

The
present’s fine, barring some aches and disorder,

About
the half-forgotten past, why bother?

It
is the future that looks so foggy, dim, and cold,

Like
an abyss – which
changes to a garden of roses –

A
vision unlike anything I’ve glimpsed.

I’ve
lived a life of managing things, all planned;

The
future, which is the present, for it’s arrived,

Renders
me useless, incompetent, frustrated – why?

But
they say: act and the door will appear! †

† Bhagavad Gita Ch 3, v
5

na
hi kaschit kshanamapijatu tisthaty
akarmakrit

not
for a moment can one remain without engaging in activity.

Talitha

1 Rupert Brooke

Cool
tiles, barefoot, rice steeped in emerald green

Lat’rite,
warm ‘n’ rusty, cold granite with its sheen,

Cobwebs,
attics musty, ancient creaking stairs,

Whispers
of spiders in their sinister lairs,

Night–rumpled clouds that dawn winds smooth and shake,

Stones
that skitter light across a laughing lake

First
rain, scent of earth; leaves that dance in spring

Old
roots; upward flash – bright kingfisher wing...

Joe

1 Rupert Brooke

The
sinuous dance of borealis,

Your
tensile tongue in copulating kiss,

A
baboon’s bum that effloresces red,

The
yeasty smell of artisanal bread;

2.Ogden Nash

A girl’s best friend are diamonds

But who
will make the payaments

For fancy
glittering extravagance –

Not I think her boy-a-friend,

Why, he can’t even pay the rent,

For sharing an apart-a-ment.

Do you suppose her sugar daddy

Will fetch the price of her eye
candy?

Then diamonds’ friends are elderly,

Debauched, and active sexually.

3.T.S. Eliot

What came first: word
or rhythm? †

The
world’s been waiting for ages and ages

For
the answer to cover these pages,

For
poetry to lose its lyricism,

Be
modern and elliptical,

Have
the aura of being mystical,

Provoke
poetic schism,

Acquire
vocabulary that’s classical

To
lend a sense of the spiritual

By
using arcane Latinism.

† Initium sancti
evangelii secundum Joannem 1:1

In principio erat
verbum …

The beginning of the gospel according to John 1:1

In the beginning was the word ...

POEMS

Priya

Two
poems by Balachandran Chullickad

Stockholm in Winter

At
the beginning of winter,

At
dusk, O cold,

In
Stockholm, at Drotningartten,

I
saw Death rummaging through some woolens

At
a second-hand clothing stall-

I
fled in fear.

At
the Reed berg Restaurant

On
the table, two candles,

Two
rosettes of flame

To
be snuffed out by a breath

Framed
on the wall,

Marilyn
Monroe,

Her
skirt raised by wind

A
fatal beauty raped by Death.

It
was then that I spotted

Strindberg's
ghost and old Ingmar Bergman

Supping
together at one table,

Adjacent
to mine.

I
asked Bergman:

Sir,
why did you let decrepit Death

Roam
the streets of city?

You
could've trapped it neatly In a celluloid frame.

In
a sepulchral tone,

Audible
only to the poet and the mad,

Strindberg
asked me:

Did
you visit the last of my homes?

Did
you see the bed I died in?

Meekly
I answered:

I
live in a hotel that bears your name.

I
sleep in the bed where you

Breathed
your last.

Strindberg
said:

In
the royal playhouse

Tonight
my drama will be on.

Go
see it ,

Stop
disturbing the old and the dead.

At
the royal theatre hall,

A
possessed Chryster Henrickson

In
the frail humane voice of the actor,

Truth
as Strindberg learned,

And
in vast despair,

Boom
on and on.

"Man
has no children,

Only
woman has children.

The
future is theirs

While
we die childless,

O'
Jesus meek and mild,

Look
upon this little child."

Strindberg,
you trap forty years of a disorderly life

Into
a dimlit rectangle for two full hours.

I
sense it throbbing. can your grip, Contain it?

I
sense it's tumultuous throb.

At
this darkend auditorium,

Oceans
and oceans away,

I
remember my wife, my son.

Strindberg
asks:

Are
you sure your wife belongs to you?

Are
you sure you begot your son?

In
reality, who owns anyone, friend ?

I
rise and roar:

You're
insane totally,

And
I hear his guffaw from nearby.

Perhaps
it wasn't laughter

Perhaps
it was the Baltic Sea

Reciting
its moody verse?

A
breeze blew in

chilling
clusters of the archipelago.

My
heart is pyre,

Nearly
burned out,

Warped
in embers.

In
a coat pierced by bullets

Death
sits nearby

warming
its hands.

(1997,
Translated from Malayalam by Kamala Das)

Tobacco

It's
at Manhattan, New York,

that
I saw

the
name board of a Cuban restaurant.

Seeing
it, my blood growled once.

And
the music there reminded me that

the
equator is far far away.

Lying
submerged in the ghostly violet light were

the
primal forms.

Two
naked dancers

entwined
in a half dance.

I
stuffed a dollar

in
the ribbon of the thigh of one.

A
wave of self-destructive tenderness

washed
over me.

A
seagull was roosting over my heart.

I
asked a Negro boy:

"Which
is the most potent drink of Cuba?"

Thousand
years of exploitation.

Thousand
years of fortitude.

Thousand
years of struggle.

A
thousand years of history.

The
arid smell

of
barks and green leaves,

of
unsheathed words,

of
algae and diesel,

of
gunpowder and tobacco.

Tobacco
of exploitation.

Tobacco
of sufferance and fortitude.

Tobacco
of struggles.

Tobacco
of history.

The
liquid

distilled
out of primordial love

which
would make

even
corpses dance.

I
remember nothing.

The
century of liberation lies

lies
buried under

the
deep blanket of snow.

Yet
in the deep,

words
lie undecayed

harking
for the call of the trumpet.

I
remember nothing.

As
I opened my eyes,

all
I saw was

a
tough Negro face

and
a clear blue sky that framed it.

The
face asked:

What
is your name?

My
name…………….

(English
translation: T.K.Ramachandran)

(2004)

KumKum

Fragments
fromSapphotranslated by Josephine Balmer

Fragment # 31

…....
already old age is wrinkling my

skin
and my hair is turning from black

to
grey; my knees begin to tremble

and
my legs no longer carry me......

oh
but once, once we were like young deer

…..what
can I do?

It is possible

to
return to my youth; for even

Eos,
the dawn—whose arms are roses,

who
brings light to the ends of the earth –

found
that old age embraced Tithonus,

her
immortal lover......

…...................I
know I must die...

yet
I love the tenderness of life

and
this and desire keep me here in

the
brightness and beauty of the suns

[and
not with Hades.......]

Fragment #32

…...frankly
I wish that I were dead:

she
was weeping as she took her leave from me

and
many times she told me this:

'Oh
what sadness we have suffered,

Sappho,
for I'm leaving you against my will.'

So
I gave this answer to her:

'Go,
be happy but remember

me
there, for you know how we have cherished you,

if
not, then I would remind you

[of
the joy we have known,] of all

the
loveliness that we have shared together;

for
many wreaths of violets,

of
roses and of crocuses

….
you wove around yourself by my side

…...and
many twisted garlands

which
you had woven from the blooms

of
flowers, you placed around your slender neck

…..
and you were anointed with

a
perfume, scented with blossom,

…..
although it was fit for a queen

and
on a bed, soft and tender

….
you satisfied your desire … . '

Fragment # 75

I
have a beautiful daughter, golden

like
a flower, my beloved Cleis,

for
her, in her place, I would not accept

the
whole of Lydia, nor lovely......

Fragment #7

[From
our love]

I
want neither

the
sweetness of honey

nor
the sting of the bees.

Fragment # 10

I
do not have a spiteful temper

but
a tender heart.

Fragment #11

Beautiful
women,

my
feeling for you

will
never falter.

Talitha

The Great Lover
by Rupert Brooke

I
have been so great a lover: filled my days

So
proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,

The
pain, the calm, and the astonishment,

Desire
illimitable, and still content,

And
all dear names men use, to cheat despair,

For
the perplexed and viewless streams that bear

Our
hearts at random down the dark of life.

Now,
ere the unthinking silence on that strife

Steals
down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,

My
night shall be remembered for a star

That
outshone all the suns of all men's days.

Shall
I not crown them with immortal praise

Whom
I have loved, who have given me, dared with me

High
secrets, and in darkness knelt to see

The
inenarrable godhead of delight?

Love
is a flame:--we have beaconed the world's night.

A
city:--and we have built it, these and I.

An
emperor:--we have taught the world to die.

So,
for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,

And
the high cause of Love's magnificence,

And
to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names

Golden
for ever, eagles, crying flames,

And
set them as a banner, that men may know,

To
dare the generations, burn, and blow

Out
on the wind of Time, shining and streaming . . . .

These
I have loved:

White plates and cups,
clean-gleaming,

Ringed
with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;

Wet
roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust

Of
friendly bread; and many-tasting food;

Rainbows;
and the blue bitter smoke of wood;

And
radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;

And
flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,

Dreaming
of moths that drink them under the moon;

Then,
the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon

Smooth
away trouble; and the rough male kiss

Of
blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is

Shining
and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen

Unpassioned
beauty of a great machine;

The
benison of hot water; furs to touch;

The
good smell of old clothes; and other such--

The
comfortable smell of friendly fingers,

Hair's
fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers

About
dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . .

Dear
names,

And
thousand other throng to me! Royal flames;

Sweet
water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;

Holes
in the ground; and voices that do sing;

Voices
in laughter, too; and body's pain,

Soon
turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;

Firm
sands; the little dulling edge of foam

That
browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;

And
washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold

Graveness
of iron; moist black earthen mould;

Sleep;
and high places; footprints in the dew;

And
oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;

And
new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;--

All
these have been my loves. And these shall pass,

Whatever
passes not, in the great hour,

Nor
all my passion, all my prayers, have power

To
hold them with me through the gate of Death.

They'll
play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,

Break
the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust

And
sacramented covenant to the dust.

----Oh,
never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,

And
give what's left of love again, and make

New
friends, now strangers. . . .

But the best I've known

Stays
here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown

About
the winds of the world, and fades from brains

Of
living men, and dies.

Nothing remains.

O
dear my loves, O faithless, once again

This
one last gift I give: that after men

Shall
know, and later lovers, far-removed,

Praise
you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.'

(Mataiea,
1914)

DEATH OF RUPERT
BROOKE by Colin
Ian Jeffery

(Soldier poet, died 23rd April 1915, aged 27)

Now
he lies silent

And
no more shall know

Cream
teas on manicured lawns

Flirting
young women

And
flow of poetic imagery.

That
rich dust which England shaped

Made
aware of her peoples pride

Now
dwells grave deep

Far
from his beloved country's shores

Upon
the Isle of Skyros under a marble slab.

Sivaram

BURNT NORTON
(No. 1 of 'Four Quartets') by T.S. Eliot

I

Time
present and time past

Are
both perhaps present in time future,

And
time future contained in time past.

If
all time is eternally present

All
time is unredeemable.

What
might have been is an abstraction

Remaining
a perpetual possibility

Only
in a world of speculation.

What
might have been and what has been

Point
to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls
echo in the memory

Down
the passage which we did not take

Towards
the door we never opened

Into
the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus,
in your mind.

But
to what purpose

Disturbing
the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I
do not know.

Other
echoes

Inhabit
the garden. Shall we follow?

Quick,
said the bird, find them, find them,

Round
the corner. Through the first gate,

Into
our first world, shall we follow

The
deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

There
they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving
without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In
the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And
the bird called, in response to

The
unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And
the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had
the look of flowers that are looked at.

There
they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

So
we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,

Along
the empty alley, into the box circle,

To
look down into the drained pool.

Dry
the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,

And
the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,

And
the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,

The
surface glittered out of heart of light,

And
they were behind us, reflected in the pool.

Then
a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

Go,
said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,

Hidden
excitedly, containing laughter.

Go,
go, go, said the bird: human kind

Cannot
bear very much reality.

Time
past and time future

What
might have been and what has been

Point
to one end, which is always present.

Thommo

Two
PoemsBy Ralph Waldo Emerson

Concord Hymn

Sung at the
Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837

By
the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,

Here
once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

The
foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;

And
Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On
this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set today a votive stone;

That
memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit,
that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid
Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Brahma

If
the red slayer think he slays,

Or
if the slain think he is slain,

They
know not well the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far
or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;

The
vanished gods to me appear;

And one to me are shame and fame.

They
reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;

I
am the doubter and the doubt,

I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The
strong gods pine for my abode,

And pine in vain the sacred Seven;

But
thou, meek lover of the good!

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.

Joe

Four
poems by Joseph Brodsky

Poem 1

On
Washerwoman Bridge, where you and I

stood
like two hands of a midnight clock

embracing,
soon to part, not for a day

but
for all days – this morning on our bridge

a
narcissistic fisherman,

forgetting
his cork float, stares goggle-eyed

at
his unsteady river image.

…

So
let him gaze

into
our waters, calmly, at himself,

and
even come to know himself.The river

is
his by right today.It's like a house

in
which new tenants have set up a mirror

but
have not yet moved in.

Poem 2

I
was born and grew up in the Baltic marshland

by
zinc-gray breakers that always marched on

in
twos. Hence all rhymes, hence that wan flat voice

that
ripples between them like hair still moist,

if
it ripples at all. Propped on a pallid elbow,

the
helix picks out of them no sea rumble

but
a clap of canvas, of shutters, of hands, a kettle

on
the burner, boiling - lastly, the seagull's metal

cry.
What keeps hearts from falseness in this flat region

is
that there is nowhere to hide and plenty of room for vision.

Only
sounds needs echo and dreads its lack.

A
glance is accustomed to no glance back.

Poem 3

Not
that I am losing my grip: I am just tired of summer.

Your
reach for a shirt in a drawer and the day is wasted.

If
only winter were here for snow to smother

all
these streets, these humans; but first, the blasted

green.
I would sleep in my clothes or just pluck a borrowed

book,
while what's left of the year's slack rhythm,

like
a dog abandoning its blind owner,

crosses
the road at the usual zebra. Freedom

is
when you forget the spelling of the tyrant's name

and
your mouth's saliva is sweeter than Persian pie,

and
though your brain is wrung tight as the horn of a ram

nothing
drops from your pale-blue eye.

Poem 4

A
Song

I
wish you were here, dear, I wish you were here.

I
wish you sat on the sofa

and
I sat near.

the
handkerchief could be yours,

the
tear could be mine, chin-bound.

Though
it could be, of course,

the
other way around.

I
wish you were here, dear,

I
wish you were here.

I
wish we were in my car,

and
you'd shift the gear.

we'd
find ourselves elsewhere,

on
an unknown shore.

Or
else we'd repair

To
where we've been before.

I
wish you were here, dear,

I
wish you were here.

I
wish I knew no astronomy

when
stars appear,

when
the moon skims the water

that
sighs and shifts in its slumber.

I
wish it were still a quarter

to
dial your number.

I
wish you were here, dear,

in
this hemisphere,

as
I sit on the porch

sipping
a beer.

It's
evening, the sun is setting;

boys
shout and gulls are crying.

What's
the point of forgetting

If
it's followed by dying?

Mathew

Four
poems by Ogden Nash

PG Wooster, Just as
he Useter

Bound
to your bookseller, leap to your library,

Deluge
your dealer with bakshish and bribary,

Lean
on the counter and never say when,

Wodehouse
and Wooster are with us again.

Flourish
the fish-slice, your buttons unloosing,

Prepare
for the fabulous browsing and sluicing,

And
quote, till you're known as the neighborhood nuisance,

The
gems that illumine the browsance and sluicance.

Oh,
fondle each gem, and after you quote it,

Kindly
inform me just who wrote it.

Which
came first, the egg or the rooster?

P.G.Wodehouse
or Bertram Wooster?

I
know hawk from handsaw, and Finn from Fiji,

But
I can't disentangle Bertram from PG.

I
inquire in the school room, I ask in the road house,

Did
Wodehouse write Wooster, or Wooster Wodehouse?

Bertram
Wodehouse and PG Wooster,

They
are linked in my mind like Simon and Schuster.

No
matter which fumbled in '41,

Or
which the woebegone figure of fun.

I
deduce how the faux pas came about,

It
was clearly Jeeves's afternoon out.

Now
Jeeves is back, and my cheeks are crumply

From
watching him glide through Steeple Bumpleigh.

I Didn't Go To Church
Today

I
didn't go to church today,

I
trust the Lord to understand.

The
surf was swirling blue and white,

The
children swirling on the sand.

He
knows, He knows how brief my stay,

How
brief this spell of summer weather,

He
knows when I am said and done

We'll
have plenty of time together.

Lines To Be
Embroidered On A Bib

OR

The
Child Is Father Of The Man, But Not For Quite A While

So
Thomas Edison

Never
drank his medicine;

So
Blackstone and Hoyle

Refused
cod-liver oil;

So
Sir Thomas Malory

Never
heard of a calory;

So
the Earl of Lennox

Murdered
Rizzio without the aid of vitamins or calisthenox;

So
Socrates and Plato

Ate
dessert without finishing their potato;

So
spinach was too spinachy

For
Leonardo da Vinaci;

Well,
it's all immaterial,

So
eat your nice cereal,

And
if you want to name your ration,

First
go get a reputation.

I Do, I Will, I Have

How
wise I am to have instructed the butler

to
instruct the first footman to instruct the second

footman
to instruct the doorman to order my carriage;

I
am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.

Just
as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,

I
know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered

into
by a man who can't sleep with the window shut and a

woman
who can't sleep with the window open.

Moreover,
just as I am unsure of the difference between

flora
and fauna and flotsam and jetsam,

I
am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people

one
of whom never remembers birthdays and the other

never
forgetsam,

And
he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or

the
gas pipe and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate

or
drown,

And
she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the

windowsill,
it's raining in, and he replies Oh they're all right,

it's
only raining straight down.

That
is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,

Because
it's the only known example of the happy meeting of

the
immovable object and the irresistible force.

So
I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and

combat
over everything debatable and combatable,

Because
I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life,

particularly
if he has income and she is pattable.

Zakia

She Walks in BeautyBy Lord Byron (George Gordon)

She
walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And
all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus
mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One
shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which
waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where
thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And
on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The
smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A
mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

Posted by
Management - Learning from Experiences by Reflection
at
9:22 PM

The simplest is the first to add 4 items = 4 lines to Rupert Brooke's list of things he loves. You just have to observe he is writing couplets in iambic pentameter, that is each pair of lines is rhymed, and the beat goesda-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM (5 beats, each called an iamb consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) as in

Un pass | ioned-beau | ty-of | a-great | ma-chine

The second syllable of the pair within vertical lines is the accented syllable. So that's iambic pentameter, simple, the most widely used meter in English poetry. But Brooke is not a stickler for preserving the meter unbroken, and indeed few poets are, for it can get monotonous. So they occasionally put the stress on the first syllable of a line, etc.

Write four lines, rhymed in pairs, of 10 syllables each, and the heck with the beats, if you can't get them exactly.

In any event the major emphasis of Brooke is on originality of images, and joining of adjectives and nouns in unusual combinations, e.g. 'rough, male kiss of blankets.' So that much is enough.

Thank you, Talitha for clarifying that the Amadeus reference was to a "smackable botty" for prospective wives. And did the student say he would use it as a fundamental criterion for identifying a suitable wife? My, the things teachers pass on to their students ...